Global Alliance for Africa’s inaugural program, a community-wide malnutrition prevention project, was launched in May, 1997 in Lwak, Kenya in response to a perceived need by the people living in this village on the shores of Lake Victoria. Sister Pauline, a Franciscan nun who oversees St. Elizabeth Hospital and a girls’ secondary school in Lwak, shared with GAA founder Tom Derdak her concerns about severe protein deficiencies in children in the village.

“I was in the Lwak area doing a needs assessment at the time and this was the need that I thought we could address most quickly,” Derdak explained.

Through a $5,000 grant from the O’Neill Foundation, GAA funded a program that taught women how to make a nutritious porridge containing tiny, protein-rich silverfish from Lake Victoria. Through the project, older women in the village taught younger women how to make the porridge.

The program, which targeted miasma and kwashiorkor, severe forms of protein malnutrition, reached 386 households and helped 732 vulnerable children during its first year. The program continues to this day.

This project is part of an ongoing partnership between GAA and the Franciscan Sisters in Lwak, who, in addition to their hospital and secondary school, operate a hospitality vocational training program for girls who have dropped out of school.